At nights birds hammered my unborn
At nights birds hammered my unborn
child’s heart to strength, each strike bringing
bones and spine to glow, her lungs pestled
loud as the sea I was raised a sea anemone
among women who cursed their hearts
out, soured themselves, never-brides,
into veranda shades, talcum and tea moistened
their quivering jaws, prophetic without prophecy.
Anvil-black, gleaming garlic nubs, the pageant arrived with sails unfurled
from Colchis and I rejoiced like a broken
asylum to see burning sand grains, skittering ice;
shekels clapped in my chest, I smashed my head against a lightbulb
and light sprinkled my hair; I rejoiced, a poui
tree hit by the sun in the room, a man, a man.
The Ark by “Scratch”
The genie says build a studio. I build
a studio from ash. I make it out of peril and slum
things. I alone when blood and bullet and all
Christ-fucking-‘Merican-dollar politicians talk
the pressure down to nothing, when the equator’s
confused and coke bubbles on tinfoil to cemented wreath.
I build it, a Congo drum, so hollowed through the future
pyramids up long before CDs spin away roots-men knocking
down by the seaside,
like captives wheeling by the Kebar River. The genie says build
a studio, but don’t take any fowl in it, just electric.
So I make it, my echo chamber with shock rooms of rainbow
King Arthur’s sword keep in, and one for the Maccabees
alone, for covenant is bond between man and worm.
Next room is Stone Age, after that, Iron, and one I
named Freeze, for too much ice downtown in the brains
of all them crossing Duke Street, holy like parsons.
And in the circuit breaker, the red switch is for death
and the black switch is for death, and the master switch
is black and red, so if US, Russia, China, Israel talk
missiles talk, I talk that switch I call Melchezidek.
I build a closet for the waterfalls. One for the rivers.
Another for oceans. Next for secrets. The genie says build
a studio. I build it without gopher wood. Now, consider
the nest of bees in the cranium of the Gong, consider
the nest of wasps in the heart of the Bush Doctor,
consider the nest of locusts in the gut of the Black Heart Man,
I put them there, and the others that vibrate at the Feast of the Passover
when the collie weed
is passed over the roast fish and cornbread. I Upsetter, I Django
on the black wax, the Super Ape, E.T., I cleared the wave.
Again, consider the burning bush in the ears of Kalonji
and the burning sword in the mouth of the Fireman and the burning pillar
in the eyes
of the Gargamel, I put them there, to outlast earth as I navigate on one
of Saturn’s rings, I mitre solid shadow setting fire to snow in my ark.
I credit not the genie but the coral rock: I man am stone.
I am perfect. Myself is a vanishing conch shell speeding round
a discothèque at the embassy of angels, skeletons ramble to checkout
my creation dub and sex is dub, stripped to the bone, and dub is the heart
breaking the torso to spring, olive-beaked, to be eaten up by sunlight.
Spring
in memoriam, Adam Zagajewski (1945- 2021)
Cool as the breeze, spring
comes and proves the proven
blank which was sorrow
a turbulent need, a healing.
Who am I kidding? To say “spring,”
and to say so on the front steps
just after noon in the bright cool of the day,
is a form of dissolution.
How have I arrived at that?
Your death is only two weeks old, sudden
and tender as the buds on the firethorn
returning and an old siren sound
carrying on the breeze
between two finches darting
through shattered powerlines,
cements a kind of comfort.
I accept this. These creosote
tears you must’ve seen on a Kraków
statue streaked with rain. What arrives next
is the marvellous phrase,
“half sea, half land”
(not yours but close) marvellous I mouth
before I digressed,
and then zoomed away to teach them, Adam,
your “To Go to Lvov.”
